by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2015/06/23 13:48 +00:00, original URI: http://www.siao2.com/2015/06/23/8770668856267196524.aspx
This last blog post in the series blog posts about MSKLC (Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator) is a little different from the other blog posts in this series of blog posts.
If you want to look at the others you can search for the keywords Updating MSKLC for the sake of.
But like I said, this one is different. Because it isn't really about MSKLC itself. It's about the keyboard layouts. And more specifically, the documentation of keyboard layouts.
Now I have done a great many things over the years to convince people at Microsoft with signing authority to approve work because I believed that it was the right thing to do for the sake of customers. Especially keyboard layouts...
Now for sake of various development projects over the last two decades:
• three for specific companies outside of Microsoft or its partners;
• once for a Microsoft internal tool that was the predecessor to MSKLC;
• once for MSKLC itself;
• once for the very public series of blog posts about Getting All You Can Out out of a Keyboard Layout that has technically been the fullest coverage of the space to date;
• once for the tool built to provide updated documentation on all of the many keyboard layouts that have been added for tho Microsoft Keyboard Layouts site after KD Chang left Microsoft all those years ago that I blogged about here. The two main arguments were that 1) the list was out of date and missing new currency symbols and 2) the site only worked well with Microsoft Internet Explorer, which none of the cool devs liked anymore unless they were contractually obligated to.
Now one of the most fascinatingest (or perhaps the most stupidest, whichever!) things is.that the project was never actually checked in to the source tree.
No one ever wanted to prioritize it, and any time I brought it up people would hint at my lack of focus (a Microspeak way of warning a Microsoft FTE that they were in the process of making a career limiting mistake.
Then the person who was in charge of hosting the mounds of images and whatnot supporting the site left Microsoft and the whole issue of who owns it after that was kinda in flux. I was almost tempted to host a site myself to force the issue, but I didn't want to get a whole new group of people at Microsoft mad at me.
Plus the nightmare of maintaining a site based on having all of the keyboard layouts that you want to document installed when you're not a webmaster or webmistress is not worth the effort, even if or especially if it did not trigger a cease and desist letter....
Today's MSKLC blog post that is not about MSKLC at all even though it is on the tail end of a whole series of blog posts about updating MSKLC to passive aggressively suggest that Microsoft really ought to update MSKLC (and how and why they ought to do the work!) is itself a separate single blog post to passive aggressively remind them that if thr can't handle the resources or budget or headcount to update MSKLC that at the very least they can push the update for the multiple browser public keyboard layouts documentation site, specifically aimed at cross browser accessibility support, national currency standard support, font update support, and Unicode update support.
UNLESS it turns out that the new Project Spartan Windows 10 browser isn't supported, in which case I'll leave it at an implicit I TOLD YOU SO and be done with it.... 😉